Today the teaching profession faces a major challenge of balancing student interests, parental interests, legal requirements, curriculum requirements, current recommendations, and limitations due to the new coronavirus Covid-19, and other factors which teachers are facing. Teachers must always look for ways to motivate students and provide them with quality teaching. All these issues present the encouragement for the creation of this master's thesis.
In theoretical part, a different way of working at school, namely outdoor teaching was presented based on domestic and foreign literature. Outdoor teaching is one way of teaching that has many advantages in all areas of child development. It was also presented how other countries teach outdoors. With the review of current sources, it was also presented how Slovenian schools pay attention to outdoor lessons. For better understanding of how to use this way of teaching out of the classroom, primary school teachers, who have experience with this type of teaching, were selected and included in the research. In the empirical part, their written and oral materials were analysed on the basis of the developed criteria for the analysis of elements of outdoor lessons. At the same time, we also defined the elements that need to be included in the planning of outdoor learning. Based on the results of the research and review of selected literature, we designed activities for teaching the learning content Substances in the 4th grade, made for outdoor lessons. The activities were prepared in a way that ensures vertical connectivity and upgrading of knowledge and experience. Suggestions for such integration include the possibility of upgrading teaching goals in the 5th grade. The selected teachers evaluated the activities on the basis of the formed criteria for the evaluation of activities.
The valid theory, formed with the help of qualitative research on a small number of cases, is contextually bound, which means that the findings apply to the studied situation and similar cases (Vogrinc, 2008). The findings of the research are not intended to be generalized to the entire population but represent a concept or a valid theory that explains the phenomenon under study, in this case outdoor teaching. The findings have an informative purpose for all those who would be interested in such work. Namely, the research offers answers to many concerns that may arise when planning outdoor lessons.
|